Why This Year I’m Not Making the Same Mistake as Carmela Soprano. I’m Divorcing the President by Admitting that I Was Duped and then Not Voting for Him a Second Time.

It’s an embarrassing fact that I don’t like to write about much: In 2008 I supported and voted for Barack Obama. At the time I had only spent 2 years outside of the progressive bubble of my undergraduate experience — enough time for the BigFoot of the Real World to deliver a few right kicks to the ass but not enough for me to surrender and accept the conservative understanding of human nature. I fancied myself a centrist and a Hitchens-style “contrarian” capable of “rising above the ideologues of both sides” and just dealing with what was actually true and what policies would work. (Yes, Andrew Sullivan was too much of an influence at the time and his Atlantic cover story sold me on the Obama myth…)

And so the president fit right into this paradigm. He was the one who would save “centrist liberalism” and transcend the liberals vs. conservative culture war that the boomers remained focused on fighting to the bitter end. (I’ve obviously had a few more rightward kicks — what Irving Kristol called being “mugged by reality” — in the four years since then.)

In 2008 I blogged angrily at my tiny blogger diary about how horrible it was for John McCain and Sarah Palin to bring up Bill Ayers to try and smear Obama as a radical. At the time I thought how unfair it would be if attempts were made to try and paint me as a Marxist, assuming I wholly agreed with all of my mentors when I was actually trying to avoid their mistakes. All the “Obama is a secret communist duping you” arguments from conservatives seemed like the same old routine of “redbaiting” the pragmatists for just wanting to do something that works. (And I know that’s how my Democrat friends and family hear it today when I try and summarize the facts of Stanley Kurtz’s Radical-in-Chief for them.)

Sure, Obama might have had to schmooze with some crazy hard-left people to rise up through Chicago politics — but he was just doing that to pragmatically reach the point where he could do some good. It made sense to tack to the left in Chicago. But now that he was at the presidential stage he would be the president of everyone and would bridge the gap between the reasonable people in both parties — unlike John McCain, who revealed with his Sarah Palin pick that he was actually beholden to the caveman-wing of the GOP. Surely when he became president his administration would in no way be friendly to hateful, anti-American, and anti-Israel dictators.

That was Carmela Soprano style-thinking. During the campaign I — and every other do-gooder liberal who fell for Obama’s Alinskyite deception — rationalized away and obscured the pervasive evil throughout Barack Obama’s background.

43 Comments, 20 Threads

1.
Sammy Levine

Tony got killed during the last scene of the Sopranos. How do I know this? Because the show goes completely black AND MUTE for about 5 seconds at the end. Now, remember back to the episode where Bobby (Tony’s brother in law) and Tony get into a fight at Bobby’s beach house. In that episode Tony and Bobby are talking about death on the boat, and Bobby says: “You probably don’t even hear it when it happens.” Perfect foreshadowing.

According to David Chase, the author of the show, Tony did NOT get killed at the end of the series.

Chase finally got fed up with the insistence of fans desperate to see Tony “get what was coming to him” and opened up about the finale. In essense, he said, too bad. You rooted for this evil guy through six seasons of the series, and you don’t get off the hook that easy. No redemption for Tony and none for the viewer, either.

Funny you should mention David Chase. He was one of the creative minds behind the iconic, whimsical Northern Exposure. That’s my favorite series of all time. I decided to look for the same whimsy in the Sopranos, even though I knew it was about a violent, unprincipled mob family. I expected to see SOME amusing scenas in it. I ground thru 4 seasons before I couldn’t take it any more. If the two series had anything in common, I never found it in 4 seasons and frankly the rest of the series was not worth my time to find whatever humor might have accidentally strayed into it. That it became such a huge hit says more about today’s audiences IMO than it does about the quality of the series.

I hope you’re not one of those people who don’t like something because it’s popular. The Sopranos was a monumental achievement, one of the greatest series ever on television, and a note-perfect depiction of it’s exact time period -the Clinton/Bush years, America at the turn of the 21st century. How bad could it have been if you stuck it out for four seasons out of six?

Chase did say that but he had to say that because it’s an escape hatch, an insurance policy just in case of the remote possibility that none of his future projects worked out as well as The Sopranos. While it did not seem possible the night the show ended, it is not unthinkable that HBO could show up at Chase’s house one day with a dump truck full off cash and unload it on his lawn for a revival–another season, a two-part series, or a theatrical film. Another point- brilliant as his creation was,Chase routinely toyed with audience expectations, and indeed, seemed to have utter contempt for them at times, so nothing that could happen would surprise me.

That’s not the impression I got. From what I read, he sounded exasperated and fed up with the conjecture and the insistence of people that it ended in a way it clearly didn’t. What’s more, he sounded DONE. I don’t think a fleet of trucks dumping cash at his door would bring back The Sopranos. It’s over.

I basically agree with you except for the absolute finality. No one thought there would be a Godfather Part III, which brings me to my next point. I’m not saying it would be good for Chase to bring back The Sopranos, just that it could happen.

What a brilliant ending to not let us know. We’ll be talking about ‘Sopranos’ ending for years, and, like divinity, not be able to prove or disprove Tony’s fate at the end. Unlike the coming elections as posed in the Carmela analogy, we can write the ending of Obama’s regime. Let’s get onto the task of writing that script.

No, “we” wont be talking forever about them…because some of “us” never bothered to watch a single episode.

Aside from refusing to cast a penny of our earnings to a blatantly anti-American and anti-Christian company like HBO, some of “us” actually grew up in, and lived with, plenty of these contemptable “Tony Soprano” and “tonywannabe” types all our lives in Jersey.

Nothing entertaining about it.

Ignorant Mooks. Classless, mannerless slobs. You knew who they were, and what they were going to “become”, way back in the 4th grade…the fast-talking wise-asses who knew everything about sex, but nothing about a book. A cigarette on their ear but no ideas in their head. No imagination beyond a deck of cards. Dress slacks with an undershirt at 14. Fancy hair but no vocabulary.

They were not into sports and never had any hobbies..they never “liked” anything and they never “built” anything…Go-carts, tree forts, model airplanes, none of that. They were the kids who INVADED your tree fort to drink beer, and DEMANDED you let them ride your go-carts, that they would crash on purpose.

Real shitheads. Always bragging about how tough they were, but never, ever ONCE fighting to prove it…you were never “worth it” to them…clever words for cowards, men and boys, who would never take a stand face to face, but would slash your tires later that night, or beat up your younger brother at the Mall.

My Mom and Dad (both Italian) had names for these punks. I cant spell it, but it sounded like “skooch-a-mint” which roughly translates to “pain in the ass”. Low class, NO class scumbags, every one of them. An embarrassment, a liability, to everyone else who worked hard and played straight

That they can prowl the bowels and basements of the decaying outskirts of The Big Apple, cash rich and future poor, carousing Diners and Bowling Alleys, using Car Washes and Vending Machines to launder drug money is nothing of virtue or excitement, or even entertainment.

Its a low-level, hand to mouth, “gypsy” lifestyle for the majority of them. Stolen Hair-care products from the trunk of a Cadillac, sold by a greaseball in a toupee… its tiring and unseemly, boring and depressing.
Some of us grew up in Jersey with these scumbags.
Nothing “entertaining” about them at all.

“But in the end, is there any payoff for the audience for taking the time to care about this criminal family? What do we learn? That there exist in this world many evil people committing crimes and enjoying the wealthy lifestyle it provides and not caring who suffers? And that a lot of them get away with it?”

And there sir…is the perfect description of our House and Senate…let alone the Presidency. It is indeed time for a third party of citizen activists….just like 1776. We need a reset….and a damn big one.

Congress is worse than the Mafia…..matter of fact…they just might be the same.

The remaining liberals are precisely the people least willing to see what is before their eyes. To be a liberal is to reject the last 100 years of political experience and to ignore the impending bankruptcy of most nations. They have ignored the warnings that they enable welfare queens. They have ignored warnings they are soft of national defense. They have ignored warnings they are being used as “useful idiots” of any number of America’s enemies. They have ignored warnings they are soft on crime. They ignored warnings that making drugs normal would wreck lives and society.

The most charitable interpretation of liberals is to compare them to Typhoid Mary. Typhoid Mary may not have wanted to kill, but she continued working in the manner that caused death to others. She deliberately avoided the police trying to stop her from spreading her death. She would not listen to any warnings and even after her arrest she returned to spreading disease when she had the opportunity.

We need to stop trying to read the minds of liberals and just defeat liberals. Maybe it makes a difference if they are wrecking countries because they are naive or malignant. Either way they spread their destruction like locusts. They are self-selected to have no conscience about what they do to others. They fill the whole normal people might have after harming others by feeling guilt by proxy for the supposed insults others have felt. The liberals aren’t moved by facts and arguments. They are motivated by narcissism and malicious envy (better to punish my enemy than help my friends).

The Framers never settled the issue of slavery and we eventually had a Civil War. We have never settled whether we will have liberty or socialism so we are headed into another Civil War, which thankfully is mostly non-violent. All of the Obama voters still want their free stuff delivered by unicorns. Those people haven’t given up on socialism, they just want a messiah that will deliver the free stuff and unicorns.

Very well said. President Obama has shown that liberalism is a complete failure. It used to be that liberals argued that “they hadn’t committed enough resources” (code for not spending enough money), they can’t make that argument any more. They used to argue the “they didn’t have the “right people” in charge. They can’t make that argument any more either because, as candidate Obama put it “we are the people we’ve been waiting for”. Obama has delivered more for liberals than any other president since FDR and look what it has caused. Liberals, like many other people, would rather be wrong than admit they’re wrong but nobody in their right mind could possibly want another four years of this.

where is the author getting “the explicit thrill of the criminal life without the real-world suffering that always comes as a result of it”? throughout the series, many people are killed or end up in jail. and at the end, most of the top guys end up shot, while tony and what few crew members he has left are holed up in a safe house, waiting for armageddon. silvio lies in a coma in a hospital, never to wake up. junior loses it and ends up in a locked psych facility. while we never really get to know if tony is killed or not, i would hardly say none of them “suffered”.

Tony Soprano is never punished nor does he suffer to any degree comparable to what he’s inflicted on others. The idol we’re led to worship the entire show does not get smashed with reality at the end, as it should.

Disagree – We saw that both Tony’s kids had a chance at redemption (ex. near the end of the series his son was considering joining the wartime US Army out of a vague sense of honor). But at the very end, his daughter aspires to be a mob lawyer and the son a porn movie producer. They were both sucked into his void.

*** Spoliler: Fade to black was the perfect ending. It didn’t matter whether Tony lived or died in the physical world as he and his family were spiritually dead.

A better ending: the mob assassin doesn’t kill Tony. Instead a fury of gunshots hit AJ, Carmela, and Meadow — who die — and Tony is paralyzed from the waist down. Cut to a year later and Tony sits in a wheelchair in his prison cell — his home for the remainder of his life. A package drops into his cell. Tony opens it and finds a book — a copy of Crime and Punishment from Dr. Melfi.

The Sopranos (in my humble opinion) was the best drama in television history. I liked the realism, right down to the way it ended. Loose ends, no redemption, and lots of ambiguity – just like real life so often is.

One of the thigns I really loved was what confused a lot of other people – the show was never about the Mob, per se. It was about Tony and his family. And in that light, the ending makes perfect sense. That story was done. Tony had finally corrupted them, absolutely and irretriavably – everyone from Carmella, his children, Janice, and even his uncle Junior had either had their lives destroyed or compromised in some way.

The only one to escape this fate was Tony’s younger sister, who had kept her distance throughout the entire series. Funny, that.

Awesome show. And like all great drama/tragedy, I can see more and more subtleties in the story every time I watch.

You’re entitled to your opinion, but I think Battlestar Galactica is best enjoyed by 13 year-old adolescent boys and adult males of like mentality – and I judge The Sopranos to be far better than The Wire, Breaking Bad, or Boardwalk Empire. It’s not even close. None of those shows had (or have) the Sopranos’ depth of writing quality.

The only show nearly as good as The Sopranos (again, in my opinion) was Deadwood, a show that ended before its time.

And did I mention disgusting? A few episodes of each to discover the “flavor” … yuck! Bertie Bott’s Vomit Flavored Jelly Beans sound more appetizing than what I found on those shows. But … different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I am not saying it was anywhere near as great as the Sapranos, but the short lived “John From Cincinatti” had a similar quality of gritty realism mixed with believable quirkiness. Similar to the Sapranos, the writers/creators didn’t try to moralize or deliver any life lessons. It was all just there to be watched and reflected upon. My hat is off to those who can create such things.

Reagan! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
American hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their forefathers’ dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Dave, I hate to say this, but Obama has clearly not taken the 2*4 out of his eye. His voters haven’t, either. That’s a pretty powerful incentive to keep voting for him.

Oh- on your instincts about tarty clothes- you might want to look up “Women’s Work: The First 20,000 years.” It covers fringed skirts for women, which sounds a bit arcane, but your instincts were right on target- the fringe was there to emphasize female features and to entice men. You might like it, in general. Elizabeth Wayland-Barber is the author.

“But in the end, is there any payoff for the audience for taking the time to care about this criminal family? What do we learn? That there exist in this world many evil people committing crimes and enjoying the wealthy lifestyle it provides and not caring who suffers? And that a lot of them get away with it?”

That’s life! Plenty of bad people in this world life full & “happy” lives, lives they enjoy as they prefer, without ever suffering one ounce of retribution that they notice. It’s just a fact, sad & aggravating as that may be.

That’s life! Plenty of bad people in this world live full & “happy” lives, lives they enjoy as they prefer, without ever suffering one ounce of retribution that they notice. It’s just a fact, sad & aggravating as that may be.

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote:
Evil men never prosper;
only the brave deserve the fair;
honesty is the best policy;
actions speak louder than words;
virtue always triumphs;
a good deed is its own reward;
any bad human can be reformed;
religious talismans protect one from demon possession;
only females understand the ancient mysteries;
the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . .

That’s a bit of wisdom from “Dune.” The Sopranos showed this very well, as does real life. The fandom seen around the show is exactly why such criminals in fact thrive until they maybe trip themselves up. Politicians are on the top of the heap in this regard with Obama seated at the very pinnacle.

Until we can bring ourselves to weed out this kind from the hall of power and work hard to keep them out, things will never change. The cycle or rise, rot and ruin will continue. Still, there are just too many people with their hands out to ever see meaningful and lasting reforms.

Well, I voted for the man who could suffer in a prison camp for the sake of honor. I don’t think that would have been explicable in my early twenties, or without extended exposure to military history. Most people don’t get that sort of exposure- the military is 6% of the population. People, in surveys, think 30% of Americans are gay- five times as many as are in the military. They are likely to vote not just for their own comfort, but for the acceptance of their neighbors. For some reason, the Democrats have captured the resentful failures at the fringes of society.

So you voted as honorably as you could- for hope, for change, for decency, for social dialogue. You had been lied to by professionals. Calling out the lies and liars is as productive as changing party allegiances. I know I sound accountanty and precise when I’m trying to figure out a lie- I know I can be lied to, and that I have been lied to, on a regular basis. So I’ve had to learn accountancy, basically. The step by step verify, check, verify,check that I think a good depostion is made from. It sounds small, and unforgiving and petty, to people trying to grandly sweep history this way or that. It feels like that bit of carpet sticking up, that trips you when you make a grand entrance. It’s kind of horrible being subject to it. That whole “come let us reason together…” but can be very threatening. I know when the Herman Cain thing was blowing up, saying “So, was she wearing panty-hose? Pantyhose or stockings and garters? Was it bucket seats?” sounded very Starr deposition, rather than grand and wise.

The baby boom attended segragated schools. This means there’s a whole generation of older, likely wealthy, voters who never sat next to a black person in a semi-formal setting. One thing about jobs- they select for personality. Schools select for geography. The generations from the 70′s onward, who did attend integrated schools- sound racist to older people. It’s easy to be rude about the person sitting next to you in math class, rather than having a gauzy sense of superiority, or inferiority, against kids at a completely different school system. I’d compare the quotes from reservation kids- they always talk about kids from non-reservation schools in the oddest terms- it’s as close as I can find to what I hear when I hear older relatives talking. They aren’t talking about real, human, dark-skinned people. They are talking about book characters, or movie characters, or their own nightmares, even. I kind of wonder if any of them think they are voting for the ever-cheerful, competent Will Smith, with his wind-flap ears.

So talking about BHO-about his competence, or lack thereof- sounds racist and odd, to older people, b/c they’ve never had to think about black people as “competent” or even “people.” At least that’s my guess. I’m trying to fit the howling racism and “n*****” jokes with people who vote for Obama. It doesn’t make sense to me.

And, well, the sort of person who votes for Romney likely has children. They are expensive. If you’ve shuffled off raising your children onto someone else ( it’s really quite awe-inspiring how many of the baby-boom managed this feat) you’ve got income to spare on yourself to buy nice suits, and hardbound books, and the latest music bits and grand stereo systems. While the people actually raising kids are prey to, oh, sweatpants on weekends, dishpan hands, the slightly anxious harried looks of someone squiring kids around in public, watching Disney movies, in older, unfashionable houses, and so on. I’d vote for the life that looks like an shopping magazine, rather than a scrimping stage-set. Would you take advice from short-term loser-looking types? I mean, the Leonard Bernstein moment of finally being unhip can be put off for so very, very long.

Plus, let’s see, fashionable economic textbooks still haven’t caught up to complexity, as far as I can tell. They still are fans of this lever of money input-automatic industrial output- that’s is the dearest fantasy of any economic dictator. George Gilder is the first time I’ve ever read about measuring complexity. Jane Jacobs does it a little, but not with numbers. So, a smart person can read an economics textbook, and feel quite clever having read it, and feel quite clever suppporting socialism- mastering that lever of input money, output production. My brother read an economic textbook on his cell-phone. Pernicious ideas aren’t confined to the classroom, anymore. And, unfortunately, conservative textbooks are few in number, and some of those few are written by terrible prose- stylists, and wretchedly weak expositors.

And, golly, that whole “most brilliant person in the room” bit. Okay, so a bench-scientist can end up a communist, without actually having endured the hurly-burly of regular life? That seems to come up alot- loving humanity in abstract, vilely impatient with people around you, at least among liberals. And, well, they write, they have degrees, they are rude beyond imagination, and again- they are the loudest, most certain voices. I’m wondering about the quiet people- can you measure what people think from, say, pinterest-which is not based on being the cleverest quote master?

To put Mr Condell’s video into perspective, we are dealing with petulant little kids who like throwing temper tantrums, breaking their toys and anything else they can get their hands on if they don’t get their way.

Liberals are like those well meaning relatives who think that you aren’t paying enough attention to these brats and ought to accede to their demands because eventually they’ll grow out of it. This is a mere phase you need only endure until then.

Like the man said at the end of the video, there’s nothing wrong with a little tough love.

I think you miss the main point of the show: everyone gets corrupted if they let themselves be corrupted. Remember, at the heart of the show is a psychiatrist who is treating someone so they can be a better adjusted sociopath. Notwithstanding how everyone who lets themselves be taken in by Tony gets tainted, there are still a couple of characters in the show that have integrity. There’s Dr. Krakower and there’s also a character that Charles Dutton played, a cop who gives Tony a ticket, suffers some consequences and still won’t be bought.

A show about corruption is not likely to end up with everything tied in a bow. As one person put it, David Chase didn’t want to let the viewers who sympathized with Tony off easy by having him whacked at the show’s finale.

If you want a show with an optimistic Christian background that confirms sin is sin, but goofiness and joy are the inheritance of the children of God- Psych. Six seasons so far. It’s seventh season starts in October, I’ve read.

It charts the emotional growth of a very bright man from child to man. He reconciles with his father, who is both tough, irascible- and always wise and right. He has a best friend. They are like Calvin and Hobbes. He courts estimable women. It’s also like a way-back machine to shows from the eighties. It’s written clean enough that we can watch it with all our children without wincing. (occasional, but totally over their head).

USAToday airs it. It shows up on netflix as well. Everyone I know who has given it two or three chances falls in love with it. The boys and I fell for it immediately-

I have no idea who Steve Franks is, but we are tremendously grateful he is able to do what he does- run a great, heroic, masculine, funny show.

Let’s hope this election is not Carmela Soprano since she chose Tony in the end. In a way, Carmela is a much more despicable person than Tony because she chose to live off the fruits of his crimes in order to live a more comfortable life. Oh, she did leave him once, but when faced with the fact that she’d get no money she went back. She was told. She didn’t care. We’ll find out on November 6th how many Carmela’s are out there willing to live humilating sad lives for a little bit of perceived comfort.

Obama really is like the mob bosses. During the Great Depression, many of them opened soup kitchens and handed out money to people in need. People loved them for it. That trend continued into the Gotti era when people packed the streets to protest his trial, because he had once given them stuff. Of course, these people never seemed to realize that the mob had a hand in making the local economies bad because of the corruption and graft they infused throughout it.

People will vote for Obama for that same reason. Obama is seen as the distributor of free stuff and many will vote to keep the freebies coming. That those freebies are paid for by the looted taxpayers and businesses mean nothing to them so long as they get their cut.